Pretend
by AllusionToAnIllusion
Summary: She'd been pretending he meant nothing to her since she met him. She pretended that her giving him pieces of herself was no big deal. But the instant his lips were pressed against hers she couldn't deny it anymore. She couldn't pretend.


**So I'm honestly not really sure where this came from. All I know is that it's about two in the morning and I've just spent the last hour trying to get this idea on paper. **

**Though I'm pretty sure everyone who cares even a smidgen about Castle knows exactly what went down in Knockdown I'll say it anyway. Major spoilers for 3x13!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Castle. I'm just borrowing these beloved characters for my own amusement.**

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She was a master at it, shoving thoughts into their own little boxes and welding the top shut.

She had to be. She was a cop. Her job depended on a decent amount of the ability to file things away for later. Or perhaps just to pretend they didn't exist.

The bodies. The suspects who made her skin crawl with disgust. The killers that had no amount of remorse in their eyes, only insanity. They all fit into her boxes. She couldn't forget about them, but she could sure as hell pretend they weren't there.

She'd always been good at that. Pretending. Letting her imagination run wild. When she was a kid she'd journey to far off lands without ever leaving her bedroom. She was an Indian princess. A mermaid. A cowgirl. An astronaut on the most important mission outer space had ever seen.

Then she'd grown older, occupying the stage instead of leaping from chair to chair trying to escape the lava she imagined was there. She was an actor, born for the stage. She'd been a soldier in the midst of battle. A distraught and love-struck teenager calling from the balcony for the only person who made her feel alive.

Poor. Rich. Guarded. Conniving. Naïve. Lustful. Enraged. Brilliant. Gentle. Ambitious. Manipulating. She'd done everything. And she'd done it damn well.

But no one could've foreseen the path she would take. A cop. A servant for the people. A slave to justice. But even then her job required a certain amount of acting.

Interrogations were all about controlling emotions, yours and the person sitting on the other side of the cold, unfeeling table. It was all about pretending not to hear the comments that would normally set you off. It was about pretending you had that last piece of evidence that would put your suspect away when all you really had was one small chance that they'd sooner confess than face what you knew they'd done. She'd done a lot of pretending in her career. And she'd done that damn well too.

Then she met him.

He wouldn't fit into her boxes. She couldn't file him away. But she was not a stranger to improvisation. So she pretended he did. She pretended that she could pretend he meant nothing to her. And that worked almost as well.

She pretended him bringing her coffee and the occasional meal didn't make her smile. She pretended she didn't like it when he lightened the mood after a long case. She pretended that his ideas were far-fetched and underdeveloped, the product of a frivolous life. She pretended he wasn't as much of a fixture at the precinct as Ryan and Esposito were. But most of all, she pretended she didn't feel it.

She pretended she didn't notice not only that he was constantly staring at her, but the way he was staring at her. Sometimes it was full of lust and longing, that wasn't that hard to ignore. Other times it was almost reverently, that was much harder. Like he wanted to reach out and touch her but was afraid of what might happen. Truthfully, she was too.

She pretended not to feel the spark of electricity she knew they both felt whenever they so much as brushed hands. Even the most innocent of touches had her heart jumping and her pulse racing.

She pretended that it was no big deal that he'd gone from infuriating tag-along to trusted partner in such a short amount of time. But it was. It was so much more than what she pretended it was. She knew that, she just pretended not to. It wasn't so much admitting that she was wrong that terrified her. It was admitting he was right and all the implications that went along with that.

And she was fine with it. Fine with her pretend world made up of pretend boundaries and pretend feelings. The real world and all of her real feelings and real thoughts were close enough to touch. To hear. To taste. But she was content. She may not have been happy, but she was content.

But that's just it; she _was_ content. As in past tense.

Now her carefully crafted world of illusions was fraying, tearing at the seams. She was getting caught in her intricate web of delusions and denials as it fell down around her.

And it was all his fault.

Why did he have to go and mess everything up? Why'd he have to do _that_? Of all the things he could've done. Of all the distractions he could've caused.

It only lasted seconds. But that was all it took.

He'd made her stop pretending for just a moment. He gave her a taste of what she was missing. She knew reality and now her illusion wasn't enough.

Her pretend world couldn't compare to the reality she'd been faced with.

His lips working on hers in that deliciously maddening way. The traces of cinnamon she tasted as she feasted on those talented lips. The feel of his tongue as it slid against hers.

He smelled faintly of aftershave, something she had grown used to after the late nights sitting side by side at the murder board. But there was something different about it now. As if it got more intoxicating the closer she got to him. She wanted to try it out. To see how her experiment would play out. She wanted to press herself up against him and find out just how helpless she could be. And she had.

The feel of his body pressed hers drove her insane. The way his hand pressed against the back of her head as he pulled her infinitely closer. Closer than she'd thought possible. How his hand had then gone on to roam her back, looking for someplace to anchor itself in the midst of their frenzy. It was all wonderfully intoxicating. Amazingly forbidden.

His hair was soft and smelled almost woody. It was sensual. It was sexy. It was making her whole mind go blank.

In those moments she had no thoughts beyond what it felt like to be kissing him. To be pressed up against him so intimately. To be doing this with the man she'd denied herself for so long. How she wanted to do it more.

And so she'd lost control. Her mask had fallen for just a moment. Her resolve had slipped. And all of that manifested itself into one sound. Not quite a moan. Not quite a sigh. Not quite a groan. It was all of them and none of them. The definition of her slip up was somewhere in the middle of all of these sounds she desperately wished for him to coax from her. And she was sure he would if she let him.

There was no getting enough of this. She wanted him to devour her. She wanted him to make her forget her own name. She desperately wanted him to make her never want to stop. She dared him to. And he'd picked up on her wordless command. He'd called and now it was her turn again. She could fold. That was probably the best decision. She could call. The thought alone made her body shiver. But against her better judgment all she really wanted to do was up the ante.

And then it was all over. Overshadowed by the job. Classified as a mere distraction. Filed under ruse. But not forgotten.

Oh, she remembered. She remembered every damn night. It was her own personal ghost. It haunted her until she couldn't take it anymore.

It was the one thing she couldn't even pretend to pretend not to think about. She'd experienced that loss of control. She'd felt all she was missing. She'd tasted what could be. And there was a part of her that didn't want to pretend anymore.

There was a part of her that wanted to do it again. That wanted to see what he could do with those hands. That wanted to know if he always tasted like cinnamon. That wanted to see what other sounds he could cajole her into making. What other things he could make her do. That wanted reality and would settle for nothing less.

Maybe she should've known from the beginning. He didn't fit into her boxes. She couldn't shape him into something that would. That meant trouble.

But she'd ignored it. She chose to pretend that it was okay. She pretended not to care. She pretended that none of those shared moments away from prying eyes or the tender touches between them meant anything. Most of them were easy to ignore. To classify as friendship or just what partners do.

But not this.

No matter what she did this wouldn't fit into any of her boxes. Her conventional labels wouldn't stick. This would change them. This would change her. It already had.

That part of her was growing. Day by day it steadily got bigger. Each night the memory would creep into her consciousness and slowly draw out more of that secret chunk of her. The part that didn't want to keep on blindly pretending. That part of her that wanted to face reality and all of its damned implications. It was consuming her. And someday she knew it wouldn't just be a part of her anymore. It would be all of her.

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**Please, please review. I'm honestly not sure where this idea came from or what the hell I was trying to do with it so it'd be awesome to know what you think of it. I'm not even sure what I think of it. So review?**

**Oh, and it's two in the morning so please forgive me if there are any typos I missed. I really tried to proofread well but I might've missed something. I know, I know. Fifteen year-olds shouldn't be up at this ungodly of an hour but if I wasn't you wouldn't have this. Hopefully that'd be a bad thing...**


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